


Hurt Right (Hurt Left)

by epochryphal



Category: Undertale
Genre: Begging, Breathplay, Dacryphilia, Depression, Dismemberment, Dubious Consent, Emetophilia, Gore, M/M, Masochism, No Genitals, POV Second Person, Self-Harm, Slime, Suicidality, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 12:02:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5163119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epochryphal/pseuds/epochryphal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This limbo hurts all wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hurt Right (Hurt Left)

**Author's Note:**

> tfw abstract concept porn
> 
> this is for emetopapyrus/speaksinhands/drcrygor, who is goddamn amazing.

There's no signal.  No way to transmit a message.  You could dial every phone, in or out of sequence, leave messages encrypted or piecemeal or plain desperate.  Doesn't matter.  Might even lower the encounter rate.  (You'd say probably, but you're pretty sure you're nemeses with probability now.)

Research is worse than counterproductive.  You feel like you're undoing yourself.  More effort, less result.  Reaching just means electrons scattering to anywhere -– everywhere –- else.

(Are memories made of electrons?  They act much the same.)

And the pit in your stomach cavity, the hollowness in your eye socket, the emptiness of your ribcage -- you wish you could say the more they throb, the closer he draws.  To comfort, to feed on your misery, to do _something_ tangible.  To break your reality apart so at least you have new pieces to shuffle.

But it just doesn't work that way.

It's not that he doesn't hear you.  Even, and especially, those words unspoken into greasy sheets, those thoughts held back from dusty covers; all the interstices you know are his and him, always listening but never talking, feeling but never touching.

He knows you entire.

And he only manifests on his time.

So it surprises you when a gently dripping arm pulls your left hand from the bloody notch in your right humerus.

“ga—,” you start, but the words aren’t there.  True to form, you manage to choke on the gap left behind and suddenly you’re heaving around unswallowable loss.

You’re retching, dry, already fallen to hands and knees as the lump of nothingness in your throat expands.  He’s _here_ , and that makes the not-here solidify in the gaps inside you.  It hurts, sharp, this jagged lack, and you unclench your fists to beg for mercy.  _Please_ , they sign without thought, re-cognition lagging behind their movement.  _Please_.

Wet darkness touches to your teeth, grace un-incarnate, and the hole in you spikes with agony, wrenching your hands up to clutch at your neck. He withdraws and you fall over yourself reaching and signing and wordlessly begging, please you never meant to stop it just hurts, hurts all wrong and you can’t seem to breathe and _please, if anyone can make it better it would be y_ —

The black shoves through your molars and snakes up your throat all at once, and as it strangles the void in you back into nothingness the feel of splintered glass turns to stinging cold.  Your struggle to draw breath lapses; your hands go quiet and so does everything else but the sloshing in your skull.  Its chill burn seeps into your bones, constant and uniform, numbing and invigorating.  Still he pours in, thickening the mass filling you up, til congealed droplets leak blinding from your eye sockets and drip back down your spine, tingling as they fall.

You’re filled with his name.

“☝ ✌ S ❄ ☜ ☼,” you gargle into him as your thoughts freeze over, crystallized into a single wish.

He knows.

He always knows.

A shard of dark stabs into your still-bleeding notch, ice and fire, and you scream breathless-soundless around -- no.  There is no around; it sinks into your walls and dwells there -- _through_ the mass clogging your head and gullet.  It ripples in reply, waves of nausea ripping through so you’re gagging on nothing-everything.  The edge in your arm twists like knives and you jolt, shaking apart yet glued together; senses gone, all save touch, you can feel him sticking to your blood, mingling, pulling it up shoulder and spine to pool in your mouth.

It pushes up at the roof of your skull and drags you upright, body slack, half-suspended by his will alone.  Goop drips like substitute tears and snot, puddling around your knees on the ground.  You’ve given up breathing and it makes your torso oddly still, perception fuzzy, all undead-like, that razor line of Alive and Alert versus given up and hollow.  Like you can never manage to forget the weight you carry, even as everything else is stripped from you.

[ _THAT’S RIGHT._ ]  His voice echoes from all around and in you, sending shivers to the tips of your toes and sparking water in your eyes.

[ _WANTING, AND NOT WANTING._  
_TO REMEMBER, TO FORGET._  
_TO DIE, TO LIVE._  
_TO FINALLY NOT HURT; TO HURT BEYOND HOPE OF RETURN._ ]

Just hearing it laid out is heavy-light.  You stifle the reflex to joke it off and instead, let yourself nod, small, numb, awaiting verdict for once.

[ _I WILL TAKE FROM YOU ALL BUT THAT._ ]

In an instant he is gushing out of you so hard it forces your mouth open and rocks your head back.  Off-balance, you don’t even try to catch yourself as you sprawl back and crack your skull on the ground.  Breath reflex kicks back in and you gasp empty around the lack of him again, left with only your own drool and snot and tears.

You barely raise your hand to sign -– for what, mercy or more, you couldn’t say –- when he lances into your elbow again so deep you can _feel_ the severing.  Your forearm clacks useless to the ground, and as your hearing fades back in you drown in broken screaming.

Weight pins your good arm, letting the rest of you spasm yourself into stillness as your blood mixes with the dirt.  The bright spots in your vision recede and it’s his face, all you can see, not an inch from your own.  You have no idea what his expression means but you’re shivering, and not from pain or cold.

[ _THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT, YES?_ ]  A hand grips your face, hole over your left eye so you can see him -– smile? –- as he lifts and slams you back against the ground.

[ _TO BE TREATED AS BADLY AS YOU FEEL?_ ]  Again. Vision gone.

[ _TELL ME._ ]  Again.  You’re splintering.

[ _I KNOW, OF COURSE._ ]  Again.  A fragment chips off from the point of impact.

[ _ASK FOR IT._ ]  Again.  All you can think is how hard it will be to explain away this time.

[ _ **NO.**   RIGHT NOW, YOU’RE HERE._]  He grinds your skull into the broken pieces beneath it and you choke on bubbles of saliva.

[ _TELL ME_.]

You struggle to raise your arm to respond, still trapped under his weight, and the most ghastly noise creaks out of him.  A… laugh…?  It’s past your current faculties of recognition.  With an effort borne of -- something; morbid curiosity? Self-preservation? Wouldn’t that be a fine jest -- you refocus your framed sight to find his eye pressed up dark against you.  It winks.

[ _TRY SOMETHING ELSE._ ]

Not a fraction of a word forms in your mouth before he’s shoved a hand inside gagging you.

[ _TRY AGAIN._ ]  Eyes streaming, you kick feebly only to have your legs lashed to the ground.

[ _AGAIN._ ]  You flail, babbling wordlessly, each twist met with another rib bound to the dirt.

[ _AGAIN._ ]

Twitching, helpless to figure out what he wants from you, barely able to move but you daren’t, can’t seem to stop, you cast about for something, anything you could do that he might -- no. No, not that.

A hand curls tight around your throat and you can feel the smile in his eye.

“ _THAT’S RIGHT._ ”  You try to form an ‘n’ around his fingers and he just shoves them deeper.

“ _YOU CAN DO IT._ ”  Different, now.  Milder.  It’s the first sign of warmth since you came to this godforsaken place and you’re arching toward it before you can stop yourself.

“ _IT’S STILL CONNECTED.  GO AHEAD._ ”  He sounds so…encouraging.  Rooting for you.  Believing in you.  Like you could actually accomplish something.

It’s been so long since you’ve heard that.

“ _GO ON._ ”  Gentle.  He’s what you imagine sunshine would feel like.  What he felt like.  You’d almost managed to forget.

“ _I’VE GOT YOU._ ”  Of course.  He always did.

You… you can do this.  Really.  You _want_ to do this.

For him.

Carefully, tenderly, you steel yourself, and try to move your right arm.

It _hurts_ it hurts it hurts like stabbing and fire and oh god you’re vomiting up bile and falling through the earth farther and farther all the way down into nothing and he’s caught you, he’s under you and over you and always was and will be, holding you still and you’re his.  You choke on him, tears stinging beneath his hand, and he rubs his thumb along them, soaking them up.

“ _GOOD._ ”  Your ribcage swells, lighter somehow, looser than it’s been in ages, and when he pets along your sternum the resulting shiver is -- nice.

“ _KEEP TRYING._ ”  You swallow around him, brace yourself and reach out again.  It’s burning and needles and the blood has crusted the joint straight, but when you lift this time your hand comes too before it all crashes back down in white heat.  You sob into him and he strokes your ribs, cooing at you.

“ _GO ON._ ”  You manage to tighten your fingers in the grass through the ache and when you sag back exhausted he traces an icy tendril down your spine.  Shuddering pinned in place is like shaking yourself together, and a humiliating sound tears from your throat as he wraps around your sacrum.

“ _NOW.  TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT._ ”

Quaking, inch by painstaking inch, you force your dangling arm to obey, and fingerspell.

y – o – u

“ _OH, SANS._ ”

Beaten and triumphant, slipping at last into that wonderful place between torment and bliss, you beam up at your partner.

[ _HOW SENTIMENTAL._ ]

Everything tightens.

[ _ **BUT YOU MADE YOUR CHOICE LONG AGO.**_ ]


End file.
